Ah, the social sharing buttons. Remember during the early era of social media when we all need to have these things on our website?

The idea behind having these buttons on our websites is simple – we want to make it easy for people to share our content on social media.

Have these buttons on your website if you want more traffic coming to your website from social media.

That seems to be the wisdom if you want social media to work in your favor.

Imagine having someone who has a large number of followers on social media share your content with their audience.

You can expect to have tons of traffic coming from social media as a result.

Get these new people to share your content with their audience and bam, you have more people coming to your website.

That’s a network effect on steroids, y’all.

Except that’s not what happened in reality.

It doesn’t work that way

Here we are, more than a decade later where social media is entering its maturity phase.

Do social sharing buttons bring you the traffic and eyeballs that you desire?

Maybe it does for some people.

But I don’t see that happening to me, though.

Yes, I do have people sharing my content on social media.

Unless the person who shares my content has a large following on social media, you won’t see much traffic coming from social media.

It’s either you build your own audience, hoping they will share your content on social media.

Or you get to know people who have more clout than you. They may share your content with their audience if it’s something their audience finds interesting.

While it’s important to build your audience and make friends with other people in your industry, those two options are still nothing but pray and hope for the best.

And we all know that’s not the best strategy to rely on.

If there’s one thing we can conclude about these sharing buttons is this – they tend to work best when you already have a sizeable audience.

And they’re eager to share your content on social media.

Why social sharing buttons don’t work as we hope for

We all know this fancy sharing button widget is supposed to make it easy for people to share your content on social media.

But here we are, those buttons don’t serve any purpose other than a mere decoration for your website.

So, why don’t we see people sharing our content on social media when we already make it easy for them to do so?

The reason for that is simple – people tend to keep what content they consume to themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, your content may not have anything explicit, somewhat controversial, or just plain malicious by normal standards.

Even if they’re free from such elements, people aren’t still inclined to share the content on social media.

No matter how good or on-point your content is, they prefer to keep the content for their own consumption.

Does it mean that they never share the content with anyone at all?

They will, of course.

It’s just that they don’t do it through social media.

If anything, they may bookmark the post and show it to their friends.

They don’t do anything like sharing the content on their social media profile for everyone to see.

What many people fail to realize when it comes to people’s behavior on social media

Congratulations if you can get your audience to share your content on social media.

But for whatever reason, you don’t see any increase in your traffic despite seeing a lot of social shares for your content.

What gives?

Do they not like your content?

Well, that could be the reason.

But for the most part, it has more to do with people not wanting to click any links they see on social media.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they don’t trust your website or anything of that sort.

Rather, it has more to do with them not wanting to move away from social media.

As you can see here, many people prefer to access their social media profiles through their phones instead of their computers.

So, anything that requires them to open a new tab on their phone feels more like an intrusion.

If anything, they prefer to consume the content straight from their social media profiles without requiring them to leave.

That explains the lack of traffic coming from social media.

It’s because of this reason you will need to create content specifically for social media since that’s how people prefer to consume content these days.

Of course, some people will still click on the link if they’re curious enough about what you want to say.

But for the most part, they prefer to stay on social media for as long as they can.

It’s fine to ditch this thing once and for all

If there’s one thing that you can get rid of from your website, it will have to be the social sharing buttons.

People don’t seem inclined to share your content on social media no matter how good your content is.

And even if they share your content on social media, they have no intention to click on the link and head over to your website, anyway.

If it’s something that they can consume without having to leave social media, that would be a much better option for them.

Another thing that no one tells you about these buttons?

They can slow down your website!

Sure, having these buttons slowing down your website isn’t much of a big deal for you if you use a hosting like WP Engine.

But even if you did, you certainly don’t want to have something that doesn’t serve you any purpose other than to slow down your website.

If you already have one, just get rid of them since it doesn’t do you any purpose.

And if you have a brand new website, you shouldn’t bother yourself with having them on your website.

It sure does feel awkward

Not going to lie it sure feels strange to see these buttons disappear from my website as soon as I get rid of them.

As much as I’m worried that I’ll be missing out a lot by getting rid of these buttons, it feels great that these buttons are no longer cluttering my website.

Depending on which plugin you use, you can make these buttons integrate nicely with your web design.

But no matter how aesthetically pleasing-looking these buttons are, it won’t do you any good if it slows down your website loading speed.

These buttons aren’t that much different from the beautiful knick knacks you buy to decorate your house.

They’re just another beautiful version of clutter if they don’t serve any purpose in your life.